The odds of Trump making a great deal with Russia are so minuscule, that it’s a sure bet Putin will come out the winner.
That’s my prediction.
“In recent days it’s been reported that President Trump wants to meet with President Vladimir Putin alone, one-on-one, at the beginning of their July 16th summit meeting.
“President Donald Trump plans to meet one-on-one with Vladimir Putin at the start of their July 16 summit in Helsinki, Finland, according to a person familiar with the plans, before allowing other aides to join the highly anticipated encounter with the Russian leader.”https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-meeting/index.html
The Trump-hating Left, some remnants of the Never Trump crowd and a sizable part of the mainstream media invariably revert to predictable and overblown conspiracy theories and seeing ominous signs of “authoritarianism” or “Russian collusion” behind every Trump action. So, immediately following this report of Trump wanting to meet with Putin alone, Twitter erupted with allegations that Trump is meeting with his handler, Putin.
Pulling back from that Trump Derangement Syndrome ledge, it seems to me that Trump’s cagey comments, where he bends over backwards to praise Putin, could be that Trump fears the Russians do have dirt on him or perhaps he does have Russian financial dealings that he never disclosed or it could be that Trump, who loathes weakness, respects strong-men type despots. Then again, it might be that this one-on-one type meeting is the Trump deal-making style, where Trump believes he can size up, woo, and seal these foreign policy “deals” with America’s adversaries. The Trump buttering up adversaries might work on chumps Trump dealt with in the business world, but it will never work with America’s most committed adversaries.
Back in 2015, when Donald J. Trump entered the 2016 presidential race, his coterie of supporters, selling “the Trump mystique”, often used the talking point that Trump is a great businessman and dealmaker. This belief is still held by Trump followers, who fill stadiums at his rallies and by the same pundits who sold that 2015 talking point, despite the evidence from his many sketchy and failed business deals and the growing mountain of evidence from his “dealmaking” from the Oval Office.
Trump acts off of impulse and unbridled emotions, often behaving like a hysterical teenage girl rather than a grown man. Along with the unchecked emotions, he operates from the belief that he is smarter than everyone else and ergo whatever decisions he makes are infallible. He also frequently makes comments lamenting how former presidents created these foreign policy messes and left the mess for him to clean up.
Every president inherits some messes and more often than not, presidents leave office without having achieved all they had hoped to achieve. Where Trump differs from previous presidents is that he is singularly narcissistic, singularly clueless about governmental and foreign policy matters and he is the singularly most intellectually lazy president in modern history. He knows very little about the subjects he’s making consequential decisions about for America.
While Trump mouthpieces were giddy about Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un and sold Trump’s ridiculously overblown assertions about the great deal he struck with Kim Jong Un, with many even proclaiming that Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, it now looks like Trump was handily played by the North Koreans. Trump, without consulting U.S. military leaders, agreed to pause our military training exercises in the region and he got nothing in return from Kim Jong Un.
So, Kim Jong Un scored a major propaganda coup with the meeting, plus all of America’s adversaries learned that when Trump wants his critics on the Left to respect him and desperately wants to walk away with a deal, he’s willing to impulsively give away a lot… without any consultation with his advisers. This is the Trump negotiating style.
Couple Trump’s impulsive style with his aversion to paying attention to details, aversion to reading his briefing books, refusal to listen to military and foreign policy experts, or trust U.S. intelligence assessments, well, Trump really is that “loose cannon”, his political enemies dubbed him during the campaign.
Along with the reports about Trump wanting to meet Putin alone first, there are reports that Trump hasn’t read the briefing reports for this upcoming summit either and it’s apparent that once again he’s not preparing for an important meeting. It’s obvious Putin will walk away the winner and Trump is likely to give away a lot, again. I expect Trump to agree to cast some legitimacy on Russia’s annexation of Crimea and hand-off Syria to Russia and Assad. In return America will get a ramped up “Trump/Russian collusion” domestic information spin war from the Left and mainstream media and our allies will grow more wary of America as a reliable ally.
There’s one other predictable outcome. Other Trump cabinet officials will be jetting around the world for months after this summit, trying to clean up Trump’s messes that are sure to come from Trump’s reckless, impetuous and egomaniacal impulses.
Oh, and of course Trump will be tweeting that he struck the best deal ever…
libertybelle diaries 
So Trump is going to Putin to make a deal.
“What will Putin give us?”
That’s not the question. The question is:
What will Putin give Donald, personally?
Remember, Donald is the president who refused to divest and he seems to be getting away with emoluments violations at will. So what will Putin give to Donald, personally, to get what Putin wants? And, how bad will that hurt America and the rest of the free world? Which is what the rest of the free world is asking too.
Donald shouldn’t be allowed to be alone with Putin and staff.
I would humbly suggest, where the “putting off of the US/ROK exercises” are concerned, we might consider that, our (US) media is giving short shrift (if any) to what the ROK leadership’s positions seem to be primarily concerned with. That is Threat Reduction. I see very little Horror at the Prospect of canceling the exercises coming out of Seoul.
Much has been made of the suggestion that “the DPRK has reneged [on whatever]” but, going back into the archived front pages of the NYT it looks to me like just another scorched Earth spin cycle (maybe to keep ginned up the whomevers).
Allow a review?
In the runup to the mid-June meet three things were, forgive the expression, <trumpeted:
1. An end to atomic/nuclear weapons testing.
2. An end to missile testing.
3. Destruction of the related testing facilities.
So far as I’ve noticed #3 was cameraed nearly worldwide and I’ve seen nary a hoot of either weapons or missile testing (of course China “frowned” on any more fissile testing given the very real likelihood for fallout over its sovereign territory given that … well:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-koreas-underground-nuclear-test-facility-is-damaged-experts-say-1524643948
***
For what its worth I think there’s something else Russia might view as in its strategic interests long-term – and for that matter the leadership of the ROK may as well – simply put; its getting goods to market.
It is not only China which shares a border with the DPRK:
https://qz.com/983460/obor-an-extremely-simple-guide-to-understanding-chinas-one-belt-one-road-forum-for-its-new-silk-road/
Now whether “our” President Trump recognizes what I’d wager Vlad almost certainly does, I’d not care to hazard a guess.